A non-precious metal hydrogen catalyst in a commercial polymer electrolyte membrane electrolyser

Abstract

We demonstrate the translation of a low cost, non-precious metal cobalt phosphide (CoP) catalyst from 1 cm 2 lab-scale experiments to a commercial-scale 86 cm 2 polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) electrolyser. A 2-step bulk synthesis was adopted to produce CoP on a high surface area carbon support that was readily integrated into an industrial PEM electrolyser fabrication process. The performance of the CoP was compared head-to-head with a platinum-based PEM under the same operating conditions (400 psi, 50 °C). CoP was found to be active and stable, operating at 1.86 A.cm-2 for >1700 hours of continuous hydrogen production while providing substantial material cost savings relative to platinum. This work illustrates a potential pathway for non-precious hydrogen evolution catalysts developed in past decades to translate to commercial applications.

Overview: State-of-the Art Commercial Membranes for Anion Exchange Membrane Water Electrolysis

“…The line in Fig. 7 represents the performance of a typical current commercial PEM water electrolyzer [98]. It is thus a current target line for the AEM water electrolysis.…”

“…The voltages at Fig. 6 Comparison of (a) the highest current densities observed for selected AEM manufacturers (indicated in the x-axis description) [16,17,69,82,88,93,97,98] and (b) average current densities observed for electrolyte type (indicated in the x-axis description) @ 1.8 V cell voltage in alkaline electrolytes. Orion membranes are not included, because the data base is too small yet.…”

“…7 Performances of AEM water electrolysis systems: (a) based on the use of PGM or non-PGM catalysts, (b) based on the feed, and (c) based on the operation temperature. The dotted line represents the performance of a commercial PEM water electrolysis system [98] and therefore indicates a current performance target for AEM water electrolyzers with pure water as feed. The reader is referred to the online version for color coding.…”

Dopants fixation of Ruthenium for boosting acidic oxygen evolution stability and activity

“…Electrochemical splitting water into H 2 is considered as a promising technology for storing renewable and sustainable energy 1 – 7 . Acidic proton exchange membrane (PEM) water electrolyzers is highly desirable because the reaction rate in acidic electrolyte is three or more orders of magnitudes speedier than pH-neutral and alkaline electrolyzers owing to its higher voltage efficiency, more compact designing system, lower ohmic loss, and wider partial load range 8 – 11 . For decades, anode catalyst for PEM is mainly concentrated on IrO 2 with the compromise between stability and activity in acidic electrolyte 12 – 17 .…”

Freestanding interconnected nanocluster textiles for efficient oxygen evolution reaction

“…Meter-size large-scale nanocluster textiles for industrial applications Finally, we discuss the scalability of our proposed method and the preparation of meter-size large-scale textiles, combining electrospinning and sputtering techniques for commercial scale applications. 36 We have shown that 3 Â 3 cm laboratory scale textile can be fabricated (Fig. 1), but it should be possible to fabricate larger textiles with electrospinning and sputtering techniques because meter-scale non-woven polymer textiles are oen industrially fabricated by electrospinning and roll-based consecutive sputtering techniques for large area sputtering, as schematically illustrated in Fig.…”